Critical State: The Bulldozer's Violent History
If you read just one thing this week … read about the bulldozer’s alarming past.
At some point before taking his own life, a German immigrant to the United States, a man named Louis Albert Wagner, reportedly coined the word bulldozer. “It likely originated from a shortening of ‘bullwhip,’ the braided tool used to intimidate and control cattle, combined with ‘dose,’ as in quantity, with a ‘z’ thrown in for good measure,” according to Joe Zadeh in a new piece at Noema. “To bulldoze was to unleash a dose of coercive violence.”
That violence, as Zadeh broke down, runs through the history of the word bulldozer in early usage and as we know it now. In the late wake of the US Civil War, white Democrats who terrorized Black Americans were known as bulldozers. That is why, in the late 19th century, the term itself became associated with voter suppression.
As a machine, the bulldozer shares a similarly grim history of serving oppressive and deadly ends. Bulldozers have been used to flatten jungle lands and deforest valuable rainforests. Bulldozers have also served as instruments of war. To kill Japanese soldiers on a South Pacific island during World War II. To clear paths for US soldiers in Vietnam. To boost the US press toward taking over Guam.
In recent years, too, bulldozers have played a central role in “extrajudicial punishment,” Zadeh wrote. From India to Palestine, for instance, bulldozers have demolished the homes of people the ruling authority sees as a threat.
“For many marginalized groups around the world, heavy earthmoving equipment has often been the visible part of the faceless bureaucratic mega-machine that runs roughshod through communities in the name of urban renewal, beautification or ‘slum’ clearance,” Zadeh explained.
If You Read One More Thing: Hidden in the Supply Chain
At War on the Rocks, Dr. Christine Michienzi took a hard look the “pervasive” risks in the US Department of Defense’s supply chain:
In the DoD’s “increasingly sprawling and complex” supply chain, Michienzi pointed out, many sources and materials are derived from “adversarial or single-source entities,” a fact that leaves the entire system facing potential risk.
“While the government and the defense industrial base have made some strides in learning about the origins of their suppliers, current efforts amount to little more than reverse engineering — trying to piece together supply chains after they’re built instead of as they’re being built,” Michienzi wrote. “It would be easier to capture supplier information while systems are being developed and fielded, and while those suppliers are brought into the fold.”
The problem is that the reverse-engineering strategy doesn’t work — and that could mean trouble for the DoD: “To address this problem, the department and the defense industrial base should build out supply chain data while defense systems are under development and maintain databases as systems are upgraded.”
The Machinery of Expulsion
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At TomDispatch, Michael Gould-Wartofsky examined the mass deportation machine Donald Trump’s administration is currently building to carry out the president’s hardline anti-immigrant policies:
The mass deportation effort, in part, relies largely on infrastructure the government initially put to use for detaining supposed terrorists. Take, for instance, the Trump administration’s forced relocation of immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, Gould-Wartofsky explained.
“The machinery of mass deportation has been set in motion in a nightmarish fashion. It is meant to be impossible to stop — or at least to appear that way,” he wrote. “Still, history teaches us that such a machine, like any other, can be brought to a halt, if only we understand how the apparatus actually works.”
What follows in the piece is a thorough breakdown of steps the Trump administration is taking, from exporting asylum seekers to other countries to attacking birthright citizenship, and from expanding the privatization of immigrant detention to flat out manipulating the truth.
Deep Dive: Death on Delivery
There was a time, between 2001 and 2015, when (for the most part) only the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel were using medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) drones. Those countries said MALE drones allowed for precision strikes that, in their words, minimized civilian deaths and injuries on the ground.
That time is no more, according to “Death on Delivery,” a new report that the Drone Wars UK watchdog published earlier this month. Since 2015, MALE drones have gone to — thanks, in large part, to China and Turkey — several African countries, where they became a component of many armed conflicts on the continent.
That report estimates that the proliferation of MALE drones in Africa was responsible for the deaths of at least 943 civilians across 50 incidents between November 2021 and November 2024.
The US and Israel were the first countries to “develop and deploy armed drones,” according to the watchdog, and although they liberally exported surveillance drones, “they have to a large extent limited exporting such [armed] capabilities.”
For their part, China and Turkey have exported armed drones, including MALEs, to countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia, but also to a slate of governments around Africa. Among those recipients are Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Libya, and Burkina Faso.
Though Tehran’s frequent use of propaganda and misinformation make it much more difficult “to get an accurate picture of Iran’s armed drone capabilities,” a 2023 incident suggests that an Iranian armed drone wound up in Sudan, as well.
Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2, for instance, is attractive because it is comparably cheaper to import, as are China’s Wing Loong I and CH-4 unmanned aerial vehicles.
Drone Wars UK confirmed the use of these drones in six armed conflicts across Africa — in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan. Strikes in Ethiopia accounted for more than half of the incidents and deaths the group documented. In other words, Ethiopian military forces used such MALE drones in at least 26 incidents that killed nearly 500 people.
In one incident in Mali, in March 2024, a drone strike killed at least 13 people and injured another 10 when it “first targeted a health center vehicle and then a house where civilians were sheltering,” the report said. The strike happened amid Ramadan gatherings, and the death toll included seven children.
An even more lethal strike took place amid Sudan’s civil war, in Khartoum, on Sept. 10, 2023. It killed 46 people and injured 55, per the report, and local reporting suggests that government forces were behind it.
Drone Wars UK called on “diplomats, state parties, civil society, and all people of goodwill” to band together and “support initiatives to reduce and ultimately end the harm” that the spread of these drones causes.
Citing the widespread harm to civilians, the watchdog also urged the international community to “move rapidly” in instituting a “new international control regime” that should focus on preventing the violence these drones have bolstered.
Show Us the Receipts
As part of a collaboration between Inkstick Media and the Greece-based Incubator for Media Education and Development (iMEdD), Michael Picard explored the Trump administration’s decision to award a highly coveted contract to operate a Gaza checkpoint to a little-known private military contractor. “Most importantly, the use of shadowy PMSCs could further normalize such groups as a semi-legitimate tool of statecraft to other governments,” Picard argued. “This comes as countries like Russia, Turkey, the UAE, and China are increasingly using such groups to advance their interests in destabilized countries.”
Also at Inkstick, regular contributor William D. Hartung evaluated Trump’s actual record as a so-called opponent of military intervention. While Trump — and a fair number of his supporters — have at times argued that the president wants to reduce Washington’s global military footprint, Hartung turned to the first Trump administration’s policies to dig deeper. “The second Trump administration may have a different relationship with the arms industry,” Hartung wrote. Meanwhile, a new crowd of military tech firms — some headed by folks with names you’d know, including Peter Thiel — “are seemingly outmaneuvering the old guard of Pentagon contractors for influence in the Trump II administration.”
Meanwhile at The World, Gustavo Solis reported on the San Diego locals keeping a watchful eye out for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents on the hunt to carry out deportations. In the California city, immigrant rights activists have launched patrols to spot ICE vehicles that may be coming to round up their undocumented neighbors. “The patrols in neighborhoods with high numbers of immigrants are part of a larger array of actions,” Solis explained. “Others include: know-your-rights workshops; food and clothing drives; temporary housing for migrants and asylum seekers; and free legal representation to people facing deportation.”
A Message to You, Our Readers, from Inkstick
In the United States and around the world, it is a perilous moment. As wars in the Middle East reignite, a far-reaching crackdown on political dissent escalates, and the top-down pressure on nonprofits and watchdogs grows, the Trump administration has routinely threatened the media. Inkstick is a nonprofit newsroom, and we won’t change our approach in the face of intimidation. In fact, we will double down on our mandate: telling the stories of people who are impacted by, targeted by, enduring, and pushing back against war, conflict, and autocracy. If you appreciate our work, please consider subscribing to our Substack, sharing the articles we publish on our website, or even pledging to support our journalism.
Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.
The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.
With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”
Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.